Aunt Verdie's Fountain of Youth

Aunt Verdie's Fountain of Youth Nearing the gray shades middleage brings, she warned her sisters Ponce de Leon's fountain was little better than dirty dishwater, no magic there, toss it out to lay the dust, time to find the real elixir, shoo the wrinkles of crow's feet into air, flap out sagging flesh like fresh sheets winging on the line in morning. What Florida of sunny days lay ahead once she, aide for the county court clerk, revised their ages backward, drivers' licenses now reading five years younger, no longer shame of drab forties but thriving thirties, living proof of mind over matter. Let all who disbelieve see truth in numbers, look not to appearances, but to documentary evidence of sisters' smiles, jaunt back in their step, never old as they look, that trickster age fooled this first and final time. —Jeff Daniel Marion 124 ...